Elaine Meyers talks to hot yoga creator and yoga competition founder, the irrepressible Bikram Choudhury, to find out.
Cool yoga dude Bikram Choudhury has a special talent. He makes tongues wag. Whether it’s for the hot yoga he created—a strenuous sequence of 26 postures practiced in a studio heated to 40 degree Celcius—or being the only yogi to copyright his yoga, his supposedly luxurious lifestyle that includes among other things a fleet of vintage cars, or his flamboyant personality that has him resembling a Hollywood dandy more than a mala‑bead chanting guru, Choudhury has managed to remain in the hot seat.
Six years ago he started a yoga asana competition in the US, which has since spread and is now making its second appearance this year in Singapore. That too sparked controversy as people debated whether yoga can and should be considered a competitive sport. Never one to be deterred by what others say, Choudhury continued to grow his competition and now has his sights set on the Olympics.
When did you start the Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup?
I started it in 2003, on the 100th anniversary of my guru Bishnu Ghosh’s birthday. It was held at the first World Yoga Expo, which I also organized, at the LA Convention Center. The competition attracted about 35 participants, and roughly 60,000 people attended the Expo over the course of a week.
How many countries is this competition held in?
Right now it is held in 42‑45 countries, with new countries added every year.
How are the competitors judged?
Yoga judging is too complex to explain, as it involves physical, mental and spiritual elements. It is often compared to judging gymnastics, but it is far more multifaceted than that.
You competed in yoga competitions in India, as did your wife Rajashree. Can you tell us a bit about that?
In India, yoga competitions have been held for thousands of years, they’re an ancient tradition. When I was 13, 14 and 15—in the late 1950s—I won the National India Yoga Championship; my wife Rajashree was five times champion; and Buddha Bose, the son‑in‑law of my guru and one of the greatest yogis ever, was champion in the 1930s. Yoga competitions in India are much harder than the one I’ve formulated for the West, and involve oral and written tests as well as asanas. In the Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup, participants “only” have to do asanas. But the Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup stays true to the competition legacy of the India National Yoga Association, and is the only yoga competition today to do so.
Yoga is about self‑actualization. It is non‑competitive by nature. So isn’t a yoga competition antithetical to the spirit of yoga?
Yoga means union—of body, mind and soul—and in that respect, anything and everything can be yoga. Jogging is yoga, thinking is yoga, talking is yoga. Also, there are five paths of yoga, of which physical yoga or hatha yoga is only one. The other paths include, to put it simply, karma yoga (work), raja yoga (meditation), jnana yoga (the ability to transcend or detach) and bhakti yoga (devotion). In hatha yoga there are in turn different fields, of which asana—or postures, which most people outside India associate with yoga—is but one. The practice of asana involves physical fitness, mental strength and concentration; and it is these qualities that the competition focuses on.
One of the goals of your yoga competition is to get yoga accepted into the Olympics as a sport. How far along your goal are you?
Yoga will be a sport in the London Olympics in 2012. It had actually been accepted for the recent Beijing Olympics but I could not make the necessary preparations in time, so the first time you will see it in the Olympics will be in four years. To prepare for London I met with Sebastien Coe, chairman of the London team that won the bid for 2012, when the International Olympics Committee (IOC) was in Singapore. I will also be heading to London to meet the chairman of the IOC and have the head of the American Olympics Association helping me.
So there’s no doubt over whether yoga can even be considered a sport?
None at all. In fact it was the IOC that approached me to inaugurate yoga as an Olympic sport. This was back in 1984 when the Games were held in Los Angeles, where I live and have my headquarters. I was a key fund raiser for those games, and the then Mayor of LA, the late Tom Bradley, supported yoga being an Olympic sport. I wanted to do it, but to qualify I needed at least eight countries to participate, and I wasn’t big enough then to pull that off.
Bikram yoga is practiced in a studio heated to 40 degrees Celcius, and heat is an essential part of Bikram yoga, but no heat is used in the competition. Why is that?
In competition, yogis are practicing at world level. At this level, temperature doesn’t matter. The best yogis can practice in the freezing temperatures of the Himalayas or in boiling heat because their cosmic consciousness is so highly developed they are beyond earthly conditions. Just recently I was on Mount Fuji in Japan and I lay down in the snow for half an hour in just my swimming trunks—a crowd gathered in amazement—and I can lie down on a bed of nails or have a car drive over my chest. In the Himalayas is a yogi called Hurricane Baba who has been sitting in a tree for 72 years and another who has been standing for over 80 years; this is all without food, sleep or using the toilet.
Is it hard for you to get people to understand this?
All I’ve done all my life is to educate people, but often they don’t understand, especially people in the West. When people tell me they want to know India, I say they’ll have to wait 5,000 years, because they’ll never really understand it. When I first came to the US to try and teach Westerners yoga, I had a hard time. I had to fight everyone, especially the media. Westerners want instant gratification, and don’t understand the Indian world, but I believe that as long as I keep trying, people will learn. Now after 40 years in the US people listen to me, they know me and respect me. But just like how Westerners may never fully understand Indian culture, they may never fully understand a yoga competition. Sometimes they just can’t.
It’s been said that Bikram yoga attracts a certain personality: Type A, perfectionist, over achieving and very determined. Do you think that’s true?
Yes and no. Bikram yoga gives people a boost; it draws out the God‑given talent that we all have but don’t know we have or don’t know how to use. It teaches people how to harness their power, which helps them to go on to be successful and famous, and that could explain why so many celebrities and top athletes are practitioners of Bikram yoga. And you can’t maintain success without yoga, because you lose your mind, or you die; you lose control. I see it all the time in Hollywood; so many celebrities are sick and fat and dying. With Bikram yoga you learn to have control, and maintain your career and your youth.
What’s in store for the winners of the Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup?
Like beauty queens who spend the year of their reign traveling and selling products, winners of the Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup travel for a year, but instead of selling goods they sell culture. And when their reign is over, they usually find themselves in high demand from my studios all over the world to teach.
You have received so much media criticism for the use of heat, the patenting of your yoga sequence of postures, and your luxurious lifestyle. What have you got to say about your critics?
I’m not surprised or angry with them; they just act and behave according to their limited knowledge and understanding. My critics are just hungry and thirsty to know more, and it’s my job to educate them. They need yoga more than anyone. They’re like the frog in the well—they can only see so much but that’s not their fault.
